It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.

They don’t require approval by a court, a grand jury or even a prosecutor. They are issued in secret, with a recipient’s silence under penalty of law. But they allow the government to collect sensitive information such as personal financial records.

As Congress expanded the NSL authority in recent years I raised concerns about how the FBI handles information it collects on Americans. I noted that with no real limits imposed by Congress, the FBI could store this information electronically and use it against everybody in this room for that matter, or use it for large-scale data mining operations. We now know from the Inspector General, the Inspector General appointed during the Bush administration, we know the NSL authority was significantly misused. In 2008, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General issued a report on the FBI’s use of NSLs revealing serious overcollection of information, an abuse of that authority.

That 2008 Inspector Generals’ report contained a chart describing trends in National Security Letter use from 2003 to 2006 (see page 112):

While representatives of the United States Government have constantly asserted the need to go after those foreign terrorists, since 2003 more Americans than foreigners have been targeted by NSLs, and the number of NSLs issued regarding Americans has climbed every year.

Since the Inspector General’s report last year, the Department of Justice has made a further report to congressional leaders providing statistics on National Security Letter use during 2007 and 2008, unfortunately only updating those statistics regarding Americans. Those figures are reflected in the revised chart below:

The use of National Security Letters is accelerating, and they are being used against Americans.

It’s time for another chorus of the Fourth Amendment. Everybody sing along:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

1 comment to National Security Letters: On the Rise and Used Against Americans

This is how a police state is created. The government, being steered by corporate America, is quietly imposing all this (and amassing more effective crowd control weapons:http://rawstory.com/2009/09/report-pentagons-burn-weapon-could-end-up-in-police-hands/) because in about 5 years (if not sooner) our money will be worthless, our economy (and probably that of the world) will implode and total chaos will be the result. Add to that the coming resource wars (that the Pentagon has a policy paper on) due to our global inaction to climate change and i think you can safely infer that we’re in for some unpleasant distress in the near future.

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